Wednesday, March 24, 2010

This book is recommended.......

The Big Short by Michael Lewis aka the awesome writer who wrote Liar's Poker. This book just got published no more than two weeks ago and I just got my copy on the Kindle. The Big Short tells the story of a few very smart traders/fund managers who saw the big subprime meltdown coming before it happened, and how they managed to make sick amount of money off it. Thru their stories Michael talks about the absurdness and corruptness of financial institutions, the fixed income desks, and the credit rating agencies. I'm thru about half the book and I think it's a really good recount of the big meltdown. The book might be a bit more technical than Liar's Poker and it might require a slightly more financial knowledge to fully understand everything, but the narrative itself is awesome enough to give casual readers (non financial geeks) a fun peek in the big mess. This book is recommended to anyone looking for a fun narration of how subprime mortgages took down the US financial system.